


The last thing to break

by NegativeBlue



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not a Happy Story, Spoilers for episode 4x08, also angst, but what else is new, sorry - Freeform, spoilers based on the promo for that episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NegativeBlue/pseuds/NegativeBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small drabble based on the promo for the upcoming episode. Something I needed to get out of my system (It was prompted by someone on tumblr)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The last thing to break

 

* * *

 

 

 

She wakes up with a pounding headache. Her vision’s spinning and her entire body aches. Groaning, Emma attempts to leverage herself upright, and it’s then that she notices her wrists are shackled together. Two bands of glowing silver are wrapped around them and no matter what she tries she can’t figure out a way to get them loose.

 

Her heads still pounding, a dull ache that hammers through anything and everything and makes it hard for her to focus on anything. She groans again and moves her bound hands upwards, massaging her temples with her fingers in the faint hope it will help alleviate the splitting headache. She notices the strange marks on her hands, the scarred tissue around her fingers. Burn marks, she thinks but she can’t remember how she got them.

  
Sighing, Emma turns around slightly to take stock of her surroundings. It’s dark and quiet and when she calls out in question if anyone was there, her voice sounds distorted and echoes off the walls.

 

All the signs point to her being held captive. In what seems to be a jail cell of all places. The same jail cell she’s been in before. Except for one glaring difference. The bars are coated with an inky darkness. Something that makes shivers run down her spine the moment she gets too close to them. She can feel the response within her body, the magic pushing and pulling around, uncontrollable and chaotic.

 

She wants to be free. Her magic demands to be free.

 

“Hello?” she tries again, a little more desperate this time. Because she can’t remember. She can’t remember, why can’t she remember. She steps closer to the bars and magic sears through her veins and the hammering in her head gets worse. It feels like her head is in a vise and slowly getting squeezed inwards from all directions.

 

She cries out in pain, dropping to her knees and clawing into the dirty floor.

 

“Mom?”

 

“H-henry?” she mutters out, her vision’s still spinning and she sees multiple versions of him swimming in front of her eyes.

 

“You need to stop.”

 

“Henry..why am I here? What happened?”

 

“They’re trying to help you.” Henry says. He’s standing in front of the bars, a saddened look in his eyes and she wonders what put it there. If she put it there.

 

“I-I don’t remember.” She raises her bound hands to her face again and lets out a noise of frustration. “Can you get me out of here?”  
  


“I can’t.”

 

Her frustration mounts and she lowers her head back into her hands wishing that for just one moment her headache would lessen. “I don’t unders..”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

It’s soft. Faintly whispered words that barely reach her ears. “For wh..” she mumbles only to stop when she notices he’s no longer there.

 

“Henry?” She calls out again. “Henry?!” It’s a little more frantic and despite the effect that the cell bars have on her body she stands up and steps a little closer still.

 

“Emma?”

 

“Mom?” She watches on in stunned surprise as her parents draw nearer to her cell. But they do it slowly, as if they are afraid of her and something lodges in her throat at the way they avoid all eye contact with her initially.

 

“Why am I here!?” She demands to know. Her voice booms around the station’s interior but she doesn’t care. “Where did Henry go?”

 

“Em..” She notices her mother looking from David and back to her again, though Mary Margaret’s eyes still drift away after a second. Drift to the ground even as they mist over. Fill up with tears.

 

“Henry’s… He’s…” David mumbles, his voice choking up.

 

“He was just here.”

 

“No.” Her mother says softly, gently, the tone of her voice she uses making Emma’s skin crawl. “Emma… You need to let us help you, you need to..”

 

“I don’t need to do anything!” She bellows. Her magic rushes through her veins again, explodes against the bindings around her wrist that keep it contained. She jerks against the restraints, rams her arms outwards in desperate attempts to break them.

 

“You need to take these off,” Emma hisses. “Take. Them. Off!”

 

“Stop.”

 

Someone repeatedly tells her to stop but she doesn’t listen. She tunes them out entirely. Her vision spins and everything distorts. And rage builds within her, uncontrollably. And then something snaps. She screams and launches herself at the jail cell bars.

 

The pain that lances through her hands burns a way through everything and anything. Sharpens her focus and she grins, bares her teeth even as her parents are frantically shouting things at her. In the distance she can smell the scent of burning flesh. Somewhere far away she can see the smoke that rises up from her hands.

 

But it is more of a blur compared to the clarity the pain gives her. For a moment she’s lucid and she remembers. And for a moment everything around her freezes. Paints the memories across her eyelids with a starting clarity.

 

“Henry…” she cries out in anguish as she finally lets go of the bars and crashes to the ground in a heap.

 

She doesn’t need to look up at her parent’s faces to know the truth.

 

And everything goes black.

 

Again.

  
  


* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title for the fic is based on some story I read a while back. It had this line in it: "The last thing to break is someone's mind."


End file.
